An Agent-Based Occupancy Simulator for Building Performance Simulation (ST-16-C037)

Traditionally, in building energy modeling (BEM) programs, occupancy inputs are deterministic and less indicative of real world scenarios, contributing to discrepancies between simulated and actual energy use in buildings. This paper presents an agent-based occupancy simulator, which models each occupant as an agent with specified movement events and statistics of space uses. The simulator allows users to group occupants with similar behaviors as an occupant type to reduce the amount of data inputs. It is a web-based tool with graphical user interface, cloud computing and data storage. Two case studies were presented to demonstrate the integration of the occupancy simulator with EnergyPlus and obFMU. The first case study only replaced the occupancy schedules with the one generated by the occupant simulator. The second case study included the replacement of the occupancy schedules as well as the occupant’s control behaviors of lighting, window, and HVAC systems. The results indicated that the occupant simulator can capture the diversity of the behavior rather than the weekly profiles, and can generate realistic occupancy schedules to support building performance simulation.